Update: Gameloft could not confirm the May 8th release date and the game hasn't shown up, so our source looks to have been incorrect. Sorry for getting everybody's hopes up. Ubisoft's Monster Burner is this week's actual Xbox release.

Gameloft announced 12 killer Xbox games for Windows Phone 8 back in October of last year (and later amended the list). Those titles starting rolling out with Asphalt 7 in February. With Ice Age Village appearing at the end of April, we’re up to seven out of 12 games so far. Not a bad two months of releases, but the most anticipated game (among our readers, anyway), N.O.V.A. 3 had yet to appear.

That changes this Wednesday when Gameloft’s N.O.V.A. 3 finally debuts. A first-person shooter based on the Halo series. N.O.V.A. 3 is the closest thing Windows Phone will have to a proper Halo title unless Microsoft ever has a change of heart. Like Modern Combat 4, this one will require 1 GB of RAM and lots of storage space, so some devices like the Lumia 520 and 620 won’t be able to run it.

Fighting for the future

N.O.V.A. 3 draws on both Halo for and Crysis for inspiration. The beginning of the game takes place on a future earth that is entirely desolate and uninhabitable. Players control Kal Warden, a commander in the Near Orbit Vanguard Alliance or NOVA for short. Kal’s mission is to recover an alien artifact that could make the earth livable once more while also battling the evil Volterite army. The 10-level campaign spans not only earth but two more alien planets as well.

On top of the single-player game, N.O.V.A. 3 will also include multiplayer via local Wi-Fi and online. A variety of game modes are supported, though it remains to be seen whether the matchmaking will discourage players from trying those modes as it does in Modern Combat 4. The addition of vehicles and mechs should certainly make for a more dynamic experience, at any rate.

The Windows Phone 8 version of N.O.V.A. 3 utilizes the same graphical engine as Modern Combat 4, so it should easily be one of the prettiest games on our platform when it releases. Its touch-screen controls will work similarly as well, with the player’s left thumb controlling movement and the right thumb handling firing, grenades, and other functions.

For players who dislike using their right thumbs to both look and shoot, gyroscope looking will again be an option. As I’ve said before, spend enough time with the game and you’ll eventually get the hang of it.

N.O.V.A. 3 will cost $6.99 and clock in somewhere around 1 GB in download size. We’ll have the download link for you on Wednesday!

More on the way

Once N.O.V.A. 3 debuts, four of the 12 announced Gameloft titles will remain:

Kingdoms & Lords: An easy-to-learn strategy game with a fantasy setting.

Order & Chaos Online: The first mobile MMO with Xbox features! Let’s just hope it won’t be too buggy…

Six Guns: A third-person game set in the wild west and based on the phenomenal console hit Red Dead Redemption.

Uno & Friends: An Uno game with online multiplayer and Windows 8 connectivity!

Of course, Gameloft will likely support Windows Phone 8 with more releases in the future as well – stay tuned for future announcements.

I don't know about you, but sometimes the trial versions are more than sufficient. If you play the trial, you may decide that the game isn't worth your money at any price, at least I find this to be the case for me for quite a few games/apps.

Yeah I normally try all the games before I buy them. However, there's a line I draw when it comes to smartphone games. And that line is 2.99€. I refuse to pay more than that for a game to play on a phone, no matter now nice it is. I'm not paying almost as much as I pay for a PC game. It's a decision I made when it comes to spending money on the Store. I don't buy games over 2.99€ (and to buy a 2.99€ the game has to be REALLY good) and I don't waste money on Apps I have no use, as much as I wish the developers of WP apps to thrive.

The World's economy isn't in the best of shapes and it's bad enough Nokia Portugal made me burn 200€ on a Lumia 620 to use while my L920 went for repair, just because they suspended the substitute phone program.
You can say "it's just a couple of Euros". Sure. A couple here, a couple there...and you make a fortune. Call me Scrooge MacDuck, but I was thought the value of money and I don't like to spend it lightly :P

There was no cheaper phone. I spent almost a month without my phone and the cheaper Nokia has here is the 620. The 520 hadn't launched and still hasn't and I needed the phone to work (hence the need for a smartphone). Sure I could have got a cheap Samsung with Android. But I would rather throw the money out of a window. The result would be the same. ;P

No, its just that I prefer the SciFi setting for fps games. The terrorist plot is boring and waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay overdone lol.
Oh and btw, I have 5.50gb free as of now :)

While the Ativ is a fine device, it will actually look better on the 920.. He's right because the Lumia has a 4.5 screen at 768p, and the Ativ is 720 at 4.8, basically the same as the Amoled on the GS3. There is no doubt that the Lumia's IPS screen is more crisp, brighter, and has better colors..

I was stung by Cut the Rope Experiments too (Though only in the sense that it dropped days after, I still believe it was worth what I paid) but I purposefully held off on DVP just in case as the reviews were pretty poor and it did seem a lot to ask for just one table. It happened with Turn N Run and Connect 4, probably a few others too - it certainly doesn't help encourage people to buy the games!

And speaking of taking responsibility for things, since you want to speak about that, how about Zeptolabs taking responsibility and refunding the early purchasers of Cut the Rope the $2 extra they paid over everyone else? Yes, it's not much, but it's a matter of principles. Whether or not the price drop was due to a pricing error, as some have suggested, or perhaps Zeptolabs saw the error of their ways and decided against charging Windows Phone users 3x as much as Android and iPhone users for the same product, the point remains that some people who wanted to purchase the game on day 1 (reasons vary across the board) were charged 3x as much as everyone else who bought the game subsequently just a mere few days later.

What is the logic behind that? Most stores do the same. If you buy something and it drops twenty bucks a week later, you can go back to the store and be reimbursed the difference, that's almost a universal courtesy most places honor. I wouldn't be complaining had they not dropped the price literally DAYS later after launching the damn thing. That's just shady business.